Venus Williams reaches quarterfinals at Australian Open
MELBOURNE — It doesn’t matter if you’re the oldest player in the draw if you’re playing winning tennis.
That’s just what 36-year-old Venus Williams believes as she heads into the Australian Open quarterfinals having yet to lose a set in four matches played.
On Sunday, Williams ousted 181st-ranked qualifier Mona Barthel of Germany 6-3, 7-5, a decade younger, but clearly a step slower than one of America’s finest. In Barthel's defense she spent most of last year sidelined with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and is just making her way back to the tour.
“At this point of the tournament you want to feel good and you want to feel like you’re doing everything perfectly,” said the 13th-seeded Williams. “But really, at the end of the day, it’s about walking to the net, shaking hands as the winner. However that happens, two sets or three sets, that’s how I want to walk to the end, as a winner.”
It’s as simple as that — if a player sounds like a champion, they often are playing like a champion. And as a seven-time past Grand Slam champion — although never in the winner's circle in Melbourne — Williams knows the feeling of being on top of one's game.
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Since first showing up in Melbourne in 1998, she's now reached the quarterfinals seven times, including that first visit. Williams has also been a semifinalist here in 2001, and a finalist in 2003 when she fell to sister Serena.
“I think the first time I played this tournament I reached the quarterfinals," she said. “So I have done this. This is where you want to be, because you set yourself up to move forward, but this is not the end goal.”
It’s not that Williams hasn’t had her tough times. She lost periods of playing time on a number of occasions in her career, most notably when she learned she had Sjogren’s Syndrome. For a number of years she wasn’t able to figure out how to handle the energy-zapping autoimmune disease, which found her struggling to find consistency in her game.
It appears that it’s all figured out now. Instead of playing one match just like old times with the next looking like she'd been beat up, she’s showing up strong day after day. This marks Williams’ fourth consecutive Grand Slam where she’s reached at least the round of 16. Her best recent showing was journeying to the Wimbledon semifinals last July, but she's hoping to surpass that here at Melbourne Park.
For now, having put Barthel in her place at the Australian Open exit, Williams is already thinking ahead to the quarterfinal match against 24th-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia — seeing it as the vehicle that could put her into the semifinals.
“I know her game,” Williams said. “I have played a lot of matches this tournament kind of not knowing what to expect. That can be — it’s a whole different approach. Now I have played her and I know what to expect. So I can almost already be settled in before I get to that match.”
Williams holds a slim 3-2 winning record over Pavlyuchenkova and took their last meeting at the 2014 Montreal tournament in three sets.
The 25-year-old Pavlyuchenkova, who has never before gone beyond a Grand Slam third round, is thrilled to be making progress with her game.
“It’s super exciting,” she said. “I was always wondering why I could never have a good start here in Australia after good preseason, good offseason, and a lot of practicing,” she said. “Now it seems like I found a way."
Pavlyuchenkova’s thoughts about Williams go back to before they were opponents on a tennis court.
“I can’t compare myself to Venus and Serena, because they have been there — I remember I was a little girl holding the racket, (it) was bigger than me, and they were ready to play in finals of Grand Slam,” Pavlyuchenkova said. “So, of course, I can’t compare myself to them, but at the same time I kind of also feel experienced.”
